After twenty years of managing properties and traveling to other states to train other managers, a  new company bought the property I managed and I was asked to leave. Well, it was unexpected because I had gone through many other changes like this during my twenty years and was always able to keep my position. This meant we had to move!  It was time to buy a house. We had never done this before because we had to live on the property I mangaged. This was exciting and scary all at the same time. We looked around and finally settled on a two story, three if you count the finished basement with its own entryway, white brick house on historical Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga, Tennessee. My Dad noticed right off the bat that the address 1732 South Clayton totaled our family’s lucky number “13”. So it had to be the right move for us. So we moved in on a weekend with all tha family and friends we could mustard up. When Monday came and I didn’t have a job to go to I thought I’d watch morning TV. My coworker called since she didn’t have a job either and came right over. We fixed a big breakfast with no interrupting phone calls! We watched all the morning shows we thought we had missed through the years and just kept looking at each other. When we checked the time, it was still morning!! We weren’t hungry!! Now what?? We knew we would come up with something. And we did. Bea Chadburn is the one in an earlier blog that went with me on many of my craft fairs.

One of the funny things I remember about our house was that the stairs leading up to the bedrooms were built like the ones mentioned in the book MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL. One of the steps was built a different height from the others and a person that didn’t know that would surly fall. This was a poorman’s security alarm and was made that way on purpose. Even though the distance from our old place and the new one wasn’t that far, it seemed like we had moved to a different state. I started going to another post office and bought my groceries at a different food market. We were closer to downtown than the mall so my shopping experiences changed. It was a delightful change and one we needed more than we knew.  God has His plans for us and even when we can’t see how.

The Lord watches over all who love him. Psalm 145:20    

There were other things about this house we throughly enjoyed too. The fireplace was a real wood burning one and we would gather the branches of the small cherry and apple trees from way at the back of our property to burn and the smell that filled our house was so much better than any candle or potpourri you could find anywhere. Just sitting by this fire in the mornings drinking our coffee was a perfect way to ensure a good day. There was a small covered side porch with a fan and a big porch off the back of the large family room where we did a lot of grilling. We purchased a hot tub and placed it below on another porch you could get to from the basement level that had other rooms and a full bath and small kitchen. This made for a nice apartment for Heather, our daughter, since she had just finished college and was now going to nursing school. All this made us feel like we had moved to one of those large cabins in the Smoky Mountains, only when the weekend was over we didn’t have to pack up and go home. We were home!

  Here’s “THE CALIFORNIA CHEFS” with another good idea. This time a great topping for steak.